Vast Ramifications in Senate Obamatrade Vote Tuesday

[High on Death]

Vast Ramifications in Senate Obamatrade Vote Tuesday
http://www.cis.org/vaughan/vast-ramific ... te-tuesday
By Jessica Vaughan, June 22, 2015


Tomorrow the Senate will have to vote again whether to give President Obama fast-track authority to negotiate trade agreements that will have an enormous impact on the U.S. economy and future job prospects for U.S. workers — and significantly constrain congressional authority over U.S. immigration policy.


Republican leaders, who seem curiously eager to facilitate this deal for the president, have bent over backwards to assure the many skeptical Republican members that neither Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, or "fast-track" authority) nor the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, which would be the next trade agreement to be rushed through the approval process on an up or down vote without possibility of amendments, includes or allows changes to immigration or visa law.

Some might be willing to trust our leaders on that, but in fact the biggest danger is not that the TPA bill and the TPP treaty make direct changes to immigration law. The biggest danger lies in the other deals that the president's team is working on. Provisions in these deals do change immigration laws, and also would prevent Congress from adjusting immigration laws that are currently being abused. That is the very goal of all trade pacts — to lock in open access to markets under current or more favorable terms, so that it cannot be changed. (For more on the implications of trade agreements for immigration law, see here.)

If we were just talking about free trade in widgets, these treaties would not be particularly relevant to immigration law. But other countries are pushing hard for open access to U.S. job markets, too, euphemistically calling it "trade in services" and the "movement of natural persons".

Our current visa rules allow foreign-owned labor contractors who "trade in services" to bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign guestworkers each year. These rules, which the president's trade negotiators would like to freeze in place, have permitted employers to replace some of their U.S. workers with foreign guestworkers, not because the guestworkers have better skills, but because they are cheaper (see the testimony at a recent Senate Judiciary committee hearing). Those who think the current guestworker rules are adequate certainly will not be troubled by freezing them in place, but there is a growing bipartisan consensus that Congress should change the law to curb abuse.

One of the treaties being negotiated by President Obama's team is known as the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). The contents were secret until it was obtained by Wikileaks. The documents reveal that the administration hopes to greatly expand access for foreign workers in dozens of occupations including engineering, veterinary medicine, management consulting, construction, waste disposal, hotel and restaurant work, transportation, and recreation. This is not just about computer programmers and nurses; TiSA would facilitate the movement of unlimited numbers of skilled and unskilled workers from participating countries.

As has been the case with past trade agreements, if Congress or even state lawmakers sought to make changes in laws, for example establishing or adjusting licensing, skill, or educational requirements that effectively closed off opportunities for say, Malaysian machinists, Honduran welders, or Mauritanian dentists, that could instigate a trade dispute that would have to be decided by an international tribunal established by the treaty. Historically, the United States has not come out on top in these disputes and can be sanctioned if the laws are not dropped.

The effect would be that control over our guestworker programs and other occupational regulations would shift away from our representative bodies to an international tribunal of trade regulators whose mission in life is to enforce the treaty provisions allowing the international movement of people and open access for service-providing corporations.

Senators should remember that a vote in support of President Obama's trade agenda is a vote to constrain their constitutional authority to adjust immigration laws so that they serve our national interest, not private or foreign interests.

[High on Death]

Well, they did it. They voted to pass what eventually will become a global governance, with authority that supercedes the US congress, the state legislatures, and the US constitution. We are all fucking done... each and every traitor that voted for this abomination should be prosecuted for treason and hanged by their pencil-necks until they are dead!

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... -track-tpp

Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill

Critics of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle
TPP protest

Wednesday 27 May 2015 08.30 EDT


A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed.

“We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate.

That vote, to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress, comes as the president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech online.

Those critics are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the sudden flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle.

Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. The US Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – the fast-tracking bill – by a 65-33 margin on 14 May. Last Thursday, the Senate voted 62-38 to bring the debate on TPA to a close.

Those impressive majorities follow months of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing by the world’s most well-heeled multinational corporations with just a handful of holdouts.

Using data from the Federal Election Commission, this chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate:

* Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes.

* The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.

* The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.

The amounts given rise dramatically when looking at how much each senator running for re-election received.

Two days before the fast-track vote, Obama was a few votes shy of having the filibuster-proof majority he needed. Ron Wyden and seven other Senate Democrats announced they were on the fence on 12 May, distinguishing themselves from the Senate’s 54 Republicans and handful of Democrats as the votes to sway.

In just 24 hours, Wyden and five of those Democratic holdouts – Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, and Bill Nelson of Florida – caved and voted for fast-track.
Bennet, Murray, and Wyden – all running for re-election in 2016 – received $105,900 between the three of them. Bennet, who comes from the more purple state of Colorado, got $53,700 in corporate campaign donations between January and March 2015, according to Channing’s research.

Almost 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate voted for fast-track – the only two non-votes on TPA were a Republican from Louisiana and a Republican from Alaska.
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who is the former US trade representative, has been one of the loudest proponents of the TPP. (In a comment to the Guardian Portman’s office said: “Senator Portman is not a vocal proponent of TPP - he has said it’s still being negotiated and if and when an agreement is reached he will review it carefully.”) He received $119,700 from 14 different corporations between January and March, most of which comes from donations from Goldman Sachs ($70,600), Pfizer ($15,700), and Procter & Gamble ($12,900). Portman is expected to run against former Ohio governor Ted Strickland in 2016 in one of the most politically competitive states in the country.

Seven Republicans who voted “yea” to fast-track and are also running for re-election next year cleaned up between January and March. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia received $102,500 in corporate contributions. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, best known for proposing a Monsanto-written bill in 2013 that became known as the Monsanto Protection Act, received $77,900 – $13,500 of which came from Monsanto.
Arizona senator and former presidential candidate John McCain received $51,700 in the first quarter of 2015. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina received $60,000 in corporate donations. Eighty-one-year-old senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is running for his seventh Senate term, received $35,000. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who will be running for his first full six-year term in 2016, received $67,500 from pro-TPP corporations.

“It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days,” said Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us. “They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist.
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“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”

This article was amended on 28/5/15 to include a comment from senator Rob Portman.

[DarbyCrash]

Yeah that TPP deal is fucked. Our future looks bleak in deed....next they'll come for your guns, land and access to drinking water supplies.I know I sound extreme, but I'm just watching the news.